When within a foot or two of the door, however, she stopped, as if
arrested by some irresistible force. Then she turned, and her face was
shown in the clear burst of moonlight and by the lamp, which had now no
quiver from Van Helsing s iron nerves. Never did I see such baffled
malice on a face; and never, I trust, shall such ever be seen again by
mortal eyes. The beautiful colour became livid, the eyes seemed to throw
out sparks of hell-fire, the brows were wrinkled as though the folds of
the flesh were the coils of Medusa s snakes, and the lovely,
blood-stained mouth grew to an open square, as in the passion masks of
the Greeks and Japanese. If ever a face meant death--if looks could
kill--we saw it at that moment.
And so for full half a minute, which seemed an eternity, she remained
between the lifted crucifix and the sacred closing of her means of
entry. Van Helsing broke the silence by asking Arthur:--
Answer me, oh my friend! Am I to proceed in my work?
Arthur threw himself on his knees, and hid his face in his hands, as he
answered:--
Do as you will, friend; do as you will. There can be no horror like
this ever any more; and he groaned in spirit. Quincey and I
simultaneously moved towards him, and took his arms. We could hear the
click of the closing lantern as Van Helsing held it down; coming close
to the tomb, he began to remove from the chinks some of the sacred
emblem which he had placed there. We all looked on in horrified
amazement as we saw, when he stood back, the woman, with a corporeal
body as real at that moment as our own, pass in through the interstice
where scarce a knife-blade could have gone. We all felt a glad sense of
relief when we saw the Professor calmly restoring the strings of putty
to the edges of the door.
When this was done, he lifted the child and said:
Come now, my friends; we can do no more till to-morrow. There is a
funeral at noon, so here we shall all come before long after that. The
friends of the dead will all be gone by two, and when the sexton lock
the gate we shall remain. Then there is more to do; but not like this of
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